Educational Science

Mammoth Tooth Reveals Beast Once Tramped Around Austin, Texas

CALGARY, Alberta — About 67,000 years ago, a gigantic mammoth chowed down on enormous mouthfuls of grass in Texas, just west of where modern-day Austin is located, according to new research. The finding is surprising, given that the beast's remains were discovered in Waco, Texas, more than 120 miles (200...

Woolly mammoth with preserved poop, wool and ligaments dredged from Siberian lake

A man following a reindeer herd in northwestern Siberia made the discovery of a lifetime when he passed by a lake on July 20; poking out of the water was the enormous skull of a woolly mammoth dating back at least 10,000 years. When scientists came to investigate the mammoth...

The mighty megafauna of the last ice age, including the wooly mammoths, short-faced bears and cave lions, largely went extinct because of rapid climate-warming events, a new study finds. During the unstable climate of the Late Pleistocene, about 60,000 to 12,000 years ago, abrupt climate spikes, called interstadials, increased temperatures...

Facts About Woolly Mammoths

Woolly mammoths were closely related to today's Asian elephants. They looked a lot like their modern cousins, except for one major difference. They were covered in a thick coat of brown hair to keep them warm in their home on the frigid Arctic plains. They even had fur-lined ears. Their...

Mammoth resurrection: 11 hurdles to bringing back an ice age beast

Many mammoth questions (Image credit: Beatrissa/Shutterstock)The road to bringing back the mammoth — a giant that went extinct at the end of the last ice age — is filled with barriers. Scientists have pieced together the genomes of four different mammoths over the past few years, but more hurdles remain:...

Ice Age Mammoth Bones Discovered on Michigan Farm

Two Michigan farmers made an unexpected discovery in a wheat field last week: the ice-age bones of a mammoth that was likely slaughtered by ancient humans. An excavation and analysis of the bones suggest they come from an adult male mammoth that had an unlucky end. We think that humans...

North American Mammoths Actually Evolved in Eurasia

The famous Columbian mammoth — an 11-ton creature known for traversing North America during the last ice age — might actually be the same species as the Eurasian steppe mammoth, a new study finds. The discovery suggests that the first mammoth to enter North America was the Eurasian steppe mammoth,...

Giant Mammoth Skull Discovered by Bulldozer Operator

A bulldozer operator at a sand pit in northwestern Oklahoma got quite a surprise this month when he spotted a huge skull that belonged to a Columbian mammoth. These giants were plentiful across the plains of Oklahoma during the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted from about 1.8 million to 11,700 years...

The last woolly mammoths on Earth had disastrous DNA

Dwarf woolly mammoths that lived on Siberia's Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago were plagued by genetic problems, carrying DNA that increased their risk of diabetes, developmental defects and low sperm count, a new study finds. These mammoths couldn't even smell flowers, the researchers reported. I have never been...

Butchered Mammoth Suggests Humans Lived in Siberia 45,000 Years Ago

The slashed and punctured bones of a woolly mammoth suggest that humans lived in the far northern reaches of Siberia earlier than scientists had previously thought, a new study finds. Before the surprising discovery, researchers thought that humans lived in the freezing Siberian Arctic no earlier than about 30,000 to...